


rewrite the stars

by anupturnedboat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Historical, Coming of Age, Crushes, First Love, Gen, Growing Up Together, Loss of Parent(s), POV Gendry Waters, Slow Burn, on the road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-01-22 14:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anupturnedboat/pseuds/anupturnedboat
Summary: Maybe things could stay like this, traveling the country, putting up tents, sleeping under the stars, making their own way. Maybe, except she is Arya Stark, and this is not the life she’s supposed to have.Arya x Gendry, alternate universe, for all the things that are different, some things remain the same.
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 88
Kudos: 141





	1. Salinas

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, I have taken liberties with Reconstruction Era America, as well as life in a traveling circus.
> 
> She’s all tension and sharp angles, and he finds himself wishing her was the kind of person who knew how to soothe those kind of hurts away. But he isn’t so -

After the last stake is hammered into the ground, and the third canvas tent goes up, Gendry makes his way back to the baggage wagons. He carefully starts sorting and organizing sledgehammers, shovels, coils of rope, pulley blocks, and the rest of their tools, so that it will be easier when they take everything back down in two days’ time.It isn’t anything he’s been tasked to do, but his hands are always restless, so he does.The older men wander off amongst the other wagons and smaller tents, looking for women and booze, and trouble. 

Sometimes, they japingly call him bullish for not joining them.And maybe he was, maybe he was stupid for wanting to keep his head down.But maybe, the truth of it was that he felt adrift, apart from everyone else.He had no place, not since his mother had died, not when he was an apprentice, and not now.Not really.

Only Hot Pie and Lommy stay behind, they are even younger than he is, and they are new to the ragtag crew of sledge men that Yoren has assembled.They sit around a fire pit, and eat beans from a can, passing it back and forth.

Gendry rolls out his bedroll and gazes up at the dark night sky, it is dotted with stars tonight, but he doesn’t know any of their names. He was lucky, he knew.Yoren had been good to him, he had no family, nowhere to go, but he did have this; work and food, and a place to lay his head.He was grateful, but he couldn’t help thinking there was more.More than the smell of animal dung, and the din of crowds of people getting bamboozled out of what little money they had, dust covering everything. That even for a no name, piss poor, boy like him, that life had to be more than this.

Before he could think more on it, there came a loud shuffling of feet. It could only be Yoren. No one else ever came into their camp after the tents were erected.Gendry rose up on his elbows.Yoren was dragging a boy by the arm and muttering something under his breath.

“Gendry,” Yoren called sharply. 

Gendry got to his feet, and watched as Yoren shoved the boy towards the wagon that held their gear.“Go on now,” Yoren said to the boy a little softer this time, and the boy crawled into the wagon.

“I don’t have time to explain,” Yoren said, “make sure he stays in there, and don’t mention a word of this to the others.”

Yoren looked to Lommy and Hot Pie who were openly staring at the strange scene, “You’d best keep your mouths shut too, or you’ll be finding yourself in empty field when we set out.”

_____

It didn’t take long for word to travel that Ned Stark, the manager of the Baratheon Brothers Three Ring Circus, had been murdered the night before.It was almost as big of news as when Robert Baratheon had been trampled by an elephant four weeks prior.

Gendry had felt worse for the elephant, which had been shot and stuffed for his service.

The older men were discussing it until Yoren ordered them to make the rounds, and make sure that all the stakes had held, and that the tents didn’t need any adjusting. 

“Sliced ear to ear,” he heard one of the men say as they walked away, “nearly took his head right off.”

“Not you,” Yoren said waving Gendry over, “I need you to stay here.”

Gendry’s eyes swung towards the back of the wagon, the boy had not made a sound all night as far as he could tell.“Round up something for him to eat.”

Gendry did as he was told, and made his way back to their wagon, with a lukewarm cup of coffee, some bacon and a hardboiled egg.

Yoren was speaking softly to the boy, and motioned for Gendry to come over.The boy looked like he hadn’t gotten any sleep. There was a wildness in his steely gray eyes, and Gendry felt something like the shiver of a bad omen creep up his spine. 

_Years later, somewhere between mile 92 and 119, while he is pounding a different kind of stake into a different kind of ground, he thinks on that moment.How things had changed after, and how now, he isn’t sure if he had made the right choice, if leaving had really been the best for them both, or if he was only ever what he feared, a jealous bastard, too old or too young, he’s not even sure._

But that’s yet to come; now, there’s just this wild eyed boy with his hands in fists at his sides.

“I don’t need a nurse maid,” the boy seethed, ignoring Yoren and glaring at Gendry.

“You’ll be safer,” Yoren said sternly.“I promised your father.”

The boy didn’t say anything to that and stomped back into the wagon.

“Watch over things until I get back.”

Gendry poked his head into the back of the wagon. The boy had scooted as far away from the opening as possible, and ignored him as he placed the food inside. 

What the fuck was going on?Gendry leaned against the back of the wagon and ate his bacon.

_____

Yoren returned a little before show time on the last day of the stop, with word that there was extra money to be had at the blacksmiths.Gendry made his way over, the chance to earn a little extra money shoeing horses chased away his lingering questions about the angry boy in the back of their baggage wagon.

All anyone could talk about was the murder of Ned Stark.The local authorities had come by, but no one had any information.Even if they had, they wouldn’t have talked.Circus folk handle their own.

“His pretty red-headed daughter is grief-stricken,” Vargo Hoat, the bullman, lisped in that slobbery way of his, “I wouldn’t mind consoling her.” 

They had been with the company for half a year, and Gendry knew who Sansa Stark was, but had never had an occasion to talk to her, but he felt sorry for her just the same, disgusted that men like Vargo Hoat were discussing her this way.

“No one knows where the other two children are,” Lady Smallwood, one of the cooks chimed in.“They up and disappeared, poor souls, that wild haired woman too.”

Gendry’s mind shifted back to the boy that Yoren had come back with.He wasn’t stupid.

There was more gossip about Robert Baratheon and his brothers, Gendry listens, but keeps his mouth shut about the boy bunking with the sledge men.Someone says that Robert Baratheon’s accidental death was actually murder, and that his wife Cersei had something to do with it. Gendry wonders if any of it is true, if the murder of Ned Stark was connected.If it was the reason why Yoren had returned with the boy and hidden him away.

It was late when he got back to camp, but the other men, hadn’t straggled back yet.Even Hot Pie and Lommy were absent.Tomorrow they would be taking down the tents. It was hard work, harder when everyone was hung over.He didn’t inquire as to the boy, but assumed he was still holed up with the equipment just as he had left him.

In the morning, everyone was up early, and set to work.The sun was hot on their backs, and as Gendry expected, everyone was lagging.At last they rolled up the tents and tied them off.They gathered their tools and headed back to camp, where they would need to take down their own small tent and pack up before moving on ahead of all the rest of the wagons to the next stop.

When Gendry and the rest of the men arrived, Yoren was talking with the boy. It was the first time Gendry had caught more than glance of him. His hair was ragged, giving his head a misshapen look, and he was wearing trousers that were a bit too big, and a mismatched vest.His gray eyes still flashed angrily.“New recruit,” Yorengrunted. 

They did not take down their camp, turns out their contract with Baratheon Brothers was up and Yoren planned on awaiting another company to join, keeping camp here for another week or so.Some of the men groaned, Baratheon Brothers was a three ring, the only other company’s coming thorough would be smaller, less pay, less food, less everything.

Yoren was fair, and paid everyone out.Most of the men decided to follow Baratheon Brothers and take on other odd jobs. Lommy and Hot Pie stayed, Tom, and Anguy too.It was a small crew, for the amount of work that needed to be done.He hoped that whichever outfit they joined up with next had some kind of crew, sledge men or pole riggers at least, or they were going to be in a world of hurt.

That night, the boy, _the Stark boy_, Gendry was sure, finally joined them around the fire.He had a fine switchblade that he kept opening and closing.Hot Pie had been eyeing it all evening.

There was something that was off about the boy, it bothered at Gendry the more he thought about it, the more he looked at the untidy haircut, and the ill-fitting trousers.If he was the Stark boy, he had just lost his father, it was no wonder he was angry.Gendry knew what it was like to lose a parent.

It didn’t help that that the others had been making insensitive remarks about the murder all night.The boy’s face had remained impassive, but Gendry could see the storm brewing in his eyes.He had half a mind to clock Lommy, who was next to him, and tell him to keep his damn mouth shut about Ned Stark.

“Where’d you steal that?” Hot Pie jeered, finally making a grab for the switchblade.But the boy was faster, and grabbed at Hot Pies collar, pulling him close enough for the tip of the switchblade to cut just under his chin.

“I’m no thief,” the boy hissed. “But I’ve been known to gut fat boys. I like gutting fat boys.”

A tense moment passed, and then the boy let Hot Pie go.Hot Pie touched the spot where the blade had nicked him.“You’re mad,” Lommy spit disgustedly, balling his fists as if to strike the much smaller boy.

The boy bared his teeth, and Lommy almost knocked into Hot Pie who looked scared enough to shit his pants.

“Scalawag!” Lommy hissed.

“Prick!” 

Gendry got up and moved between them.“Fuck off,” he growled at the two boys. He settled down next to the Stark boy. 

“I don’t need your help,” the boy spat.

“It wasn’t you I was worried about,” he said, realizing that it was actually true.The Stark boy was tough.Tough in spite of the shitty hand the world had dealt him.It made Gendry want to show him kindness, it was least he could do.Yoren had done if for him once, and his life had changed for the better. “That is a nice knife, can I see it?” 

The boy switched it closed and put it in his pocket. “I didn’t steal it.”

“Never said you did.”

“It was a gift.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Gendry found himself saying.All the color drained from the boy’s face, and he quickly turned away. “Don’t listen to anything those twats say either.”

The boy turned, appraised him with his steely gaze.

“I’m Gendry,” he said to the fire. “What’s your name?”

The boy paused for a moment, and then his shoulders dropped, and he whispered, “Arya.Arya Stark.”

_____

“No one can know. My life depends on it.” 

“They won’t, not from me anyway,” Gendry promised quietly, looking over to make sure that Lommy and Hot Pie were far enough out of ear shot. Yoren, Tom and Anguy had gone into town to inquire about work.The next outfit hadn’t come by and it had been more than a week.Supplies were running low. 

She glared as him like she already didn’t believe him.“Lommy and Hot Pie can’t know.”

“I swear it,” he sighed, exasperated.For someone so small, she turning out to be quite the pain in the ass. They finished up their breakfast, and began to tidy up camp in silence.

The sun is high in the sky, when Hot Pie and Lommy wander off. Gendry is left to his own thoughts, which are sluggish. He thinks he might take a nap, the heat is making him drowsy.Arya is using a stick to draw in the dirt and looks about as hot and miserable as he does.

Before Yoren had dragged her into camp disguised as a boy, he’d never known her name, her brothers either. Neither had been performers like their sister Sansa.And laborers like himself generally weren’t welcome in performer’s tents, and certainly didn’t interact with the manager or his family. 

All he remembers about Arya Stark was that she had a big dog, and ran through the camp with wild abandon.He kept trying to reconcile that vague image with the lumpy headed girl in front of him.

“Stop staring,” she growled poking him in the chest with the stupid pointy stick she’d been carrying around.

He has a million questions to ask, but settles on, “What happened to your dog?”

She stills, pain flitting over features, before she takes a deep breath.“I ran her off; it was for her own good.”

He wants to ask what that means, but before he can Yoren and his horse came plodding back into camp.There wasn’t blacksmith work for Gendry, but Tom and Anguy secured a couple of days’ worth of work repairing a fence in a pasture.The rest of them would be lending a hand picking berries.

_____

It is fucking hot.Sweat rolls down his temples, down his back.His shoulders ache where he has been hunching over all day trying to discern which strawberries are ripe and pluck them carefully from the stems.His fingers are big and plodding trying to ferret them out from the under leaves.

Arya is much quicker, she’s already got twice the amount of flats that he does.They’re working side by side rows, while Lommy and Hot Pie work further down.He’s promised to keep her secret, even though he doesn’t know what happened.Why her father was murdered, why Yoren had disguised her as a boy, why she is hiding out instead of staying with her sister.Every time he tries to bring it up, she shuts down. Sometimes she flicks the switchblade open glaring at him in warning.

“Roll it in your palm,” she calls over her shoulder.

“What?” Sweat drips down his neck, into his dirty shirt._Seven hells_.

She sighs, annoyed, which makes him annoyed, and carefully steps over the row separating them.She squats down next to him.She swats his hand away and grasps the stem of the strawberry he’d been about to yank from its stem.She holds it lightly between her forefinger and thumbnail, and gives it a light twist, rolling it softly into her palm.She holds it there and picks three more berries before depositing them into his mostly empty flat.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

She shrugs, “it’s not that hard.”

He tries to remember the movements of her fingers and palm on his next go.It’s still clumsy, but he gets into a rhythm.She is still in his row, filling his flats instead of hers, and by the end of the day, their stacks are about the same.And outmatch Lommy and Hot Pies by a lot.

He tries to give her some of his flats, she’s earned the extra coin after all, but she just ignores him.

On the way back to camp they stop in town and carefully sort out how much they can spend.Hot Pie and Lommy chip in, and they come back to camp feeling rich, with two generous hunks of steak, fingerling potatoes, and a Rhubarb pie.

Hot Pie works over the food and Gendry’s stomach clenches and gurgles.Arya disappears into the wagon, and when she remerges she wiped her face and hands clean and has changed into a ragged looking tunic and suspenders that hold up the trousers that she has been hiking up all day.

He doesn’t ask how or where, he assumes Yoren, even though he’s nowhere to be found.

When Hot Pie hands them their dishes, he immediately swaps his out for hers, as hungry as he is, she’s skin and bones, and he can’t bring himself to take the bigger piece.

She doesn’t say anything, but later, when he sets out his bedroll, he catches her watching him.She frowns and turns away, crawling back into the wagon.

**_____**

They pick strawberries for days.He aches all over.They’re all in bad moods.

Lommy and Hot Pie start calling Arya Lumpyhead, which, is kind of fitting considering whatever has happened to her hair.But it doesn’t last long.Arya punches Lommy right between the eyes, hard, and blood spurts out of his nose and onto his shirt.Tom yanks Lommy away by the back of the shirt, and Gendry scoops Arya up and deposits her behind the wagons until she cools off.She’s all tension and sharp angles, and he finds himself wishing he was the kind of person who knew how to soothe those kind of hurts away.But he isn’t so -

“Yoren cut it,” she seethes, interrupting his thoughts. “So no one would recognize me.” 

_Ah, so that’s how it had happened_. “What did I tell you?”

“Not to listen to those twats,” she snarls balling her fists at her sides. 

He chuckles, “exactly.”She looks up at him and he feels a surprising rush of fondness towards her. He’s never had a little sister, or anyone to look out for before.It’s . . . nice. “It’ll grow back soon enough,” he promises resisting the urge to ruffle the lumpy hair.

Arya stops hiding out in the wagon after that, and sets out a bundle of horse blankets close to his bedroll.He doesn’t say anything, she’d probably punch him in the gut if he did, but every time he looks over it feels a little bit like a victory.

“He wasn’t what they are saying,” she whispers one night when everyone else is asleep. 

He rolls over. “What are they saying?”

“That father was a crook. That he was stealing, and got what he deserved.But it’s not true. Father’s only ever been an honorable man.”

“And that is how you should remember him, no matter what anyone else says,” he whispers back.“I’ve never had a father myself, but if I did, well, I’d hope for one as honorable as you say yours was.”

“Thanks,” she whispers, before rolling over.He watches the stars move across the dark sky for a long time before sleep finally takes him.

A few days later, Yoren learns that Riverrun Circus and Menagerie will be making a stop in Merced County, not far from where they had set up Baratheon Brothers’ tents.They pack up, and make their way East.And if he sees any apprehension in Arya’s eyes, he doesn’t say anything about it. If anyone gossips about Ned Stark in front of her, he’ll personally make them wish they hadn’t.


	2. Merced County

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They spread out their blankets amidst the tools he hasn’t yet organized. Arya faces him in the dark and they watch each other’s faces carefully, solemnly, thunder rumbling around them, and then later, Hot Pies snotty sounding snores.

They make it three days’ time, and don’t even set up their tent when they arrive.Gendry is out before he can even look over to make sure Arya is setting up her blankets next to him.He dreams about a forest of old trees, snow falling, and Arya’s eyes that shine like a wolf’s. 

Yoren, Tom and Anguy are already gone when Gendry wakes.Gone to scout the site and mark the positions where the center poles will go.They would then map the perimeter with more rods topped with color coded flags before Riverruns’ wagons arrived.

Riverrun is not as big as Baratheon Brothers, so they will only have one big top, and one menagerie tent to set up, but it will be with less help than what they get with the bigger circus.They will be up early the next morning to stake, but today, they only set up their own camp. 

After, Yoren tells them to fuck off and find something to do.It is well into afternoon when they head towards town, Arya hangs back behind the other men, and Gendry finds himself slowing to her pace.

She doesn’t tell him to piss off and they walk in companionable silence for a while.

“You got family?”

“Nope. It’s just me.”

She raises her eyebrows, because obviously that is not enough of an answer for her.“My mom died when I was younger than you,” he explains. He doesn’t usually share these kinds of details, not that anyone ever asks, but Arya doesn’t leave room for him to remain silent on the matter.“Never knew who my father was, died before I was born she said.”

“So after she died, you ran away with the circus then?” 

He looks over to see if she’s teasing him.Her lips are quirked up in a half smile, but she motions for him to go on.

“Not exactly.Before this, I was a blacksmiths apprentice, but then he didn’t want me anymore. It was luck that I met Yoren.I left with him and started doing this.It’s been good work.”

She hums in response. “Hard work.”

“That it is,” he agrees.

“Father says there is honor in hard work.”

“Is that a compliment?” It’s perhaps the nicest thing she’s ever said to him.

“Not a compliment, just a fact,” she says in that dry way of hers, but there is a hint of a smile still on her lips, so he’s going to count it as a compliment, maybe even a sign that they are becoming friends.

Before they reach the road that will take them into town she spots a pond and heads straight for it without saying a word.He sighs, and follows her, he has a few cents left, and he wouldn’t have minded spending it on something sweet. Instead he finds himself traipsing through overgrown brittle scrub.“What are you doing?” he calls, quarrelsomely. He knows she’s not his responsibility, but it isn’t exactly safe for a young girl to be wandering around alone, even a young girl with a switchblade.

“Turn around!” she squawks, when he catches up, he hadn’t noticed she’d been shucking out of her too big trousers.

He keeps his eyes trained on the dusty road, doesn’t turn when he hears the splash of water behind him.“Hey dummy, are you coming in or not?” he hears her call out.

Her ragged hair is wet and slicked back, and the water is reflected in her gray eyes. She’s got on a thin undershirt, and like this, suddenly she doesn’t look anything like a boy.“Turn around,” he orders, mimicking her tone. She rolls her eyes, but turns around.

“I grew up with four brothers,” she shouts, “you don’t have to be so modest.”

He ignores her, and carefully sets his trousers on top of his jacket.He keeps his undergarments on.

“You can turn around now,” he huffs once he’s in up to his waist.He grimaces as mud squishes between his toes. 

“Water’s dirty,” he gripes.

“Stop being a baby, it’s fine.”

“You’re a right pain in the ass, you know that?”

“Then go. I don’t care.”

But they both know he won’t, so instead they float for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.

“We should run away,” she finally says breaking the silence.“Be outlaws like Wenda. We can hop a train, find Jon.”

“Where do you reckon we hop a train?The Central Pacific don’t run this far.”

“In Lincoln then.”

“That’s a long way from here,” he says splashing water at her.“Who’s Jon anyway?”

“One of my brothers, my best brother,” she explains exasperatedly, as if he’s somehow supposed to know that, “Everyone says he’s dead.But he’s not.I’d know if he was.”

Gendry stops splashing water at her.

“Robb, my other brother came home in a box, after Gettysburg. But not Jon, he’s just lost, and I need to find him.And then we will find Illyn Payne and make him pay for what he did to father. I’ll put my blade right through his eye, Cersei and Joffrey too.”

Her lips dip below the water, her gray eyes steadfastly meet his, gauging his reaction, and he knows she’s not telling tall tells.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?” he stammers.

“Like I am some kind of nightmare.”

He smirks a little at that, she is, an actual nightmare most of the time.It’s on the tip of his tongue to say so.She splashes him with a scowl.

“You were there then?” he asks, serious now, because he’s been wondering and wanting to ask.“You saw what happened?”

She nods, and he can see the miserable look on her face, but she does not cry. Just like he thought, this Stark is tough. Then - _Fuck, does this world ever give anyone a break?_

They pull on their clothes with their backs to each other, and then lean against a half dead tree.They will have to head back soon, but for now, words are spilling out of her, and it’s more than Gendry has bargained for, but he wants to know anyway.

Arya tells him in excruciating detail how Ned Stark had been murdered. How she had been lurking behind the backstage curtain waiting for the butchers boy Mycah, when Ilyn Payne had come in.The way blood had flashed against the dark blue tent. How Yoren had yanked her away, and chopped off her hair with his knife.

“You could go to the authorities.”

“No one listens to what little girls have to say.”

“Murder is a crime, they’d have to investigate.”

“And then I’d mysteriously disappear,” she sighs dejectedly, then, “You don’t know anything about the Lannisters do you?”

“Most people are terrible. I know that,” he says, because it’s true, and it feels like he keeps being reminded of it time and time again.“And I know you can’t go around stabbing people.Besides, Ilyn Payne is far away now, and even if you caught up with him he’d squash you like a bug.”

“That’s stupid.I’m no bug,” she replies, elbowing him hard in the ribs.

“Oww,” he complains rubbing at the spot.“Do all little girls have such pointy elbows?”

“Illyn Payne may have spilt my father’s blood, but it wasn’t his idea.He’s not the only one who’d want me dead and gone. The Lannisters had something to do with it, they must suspect I know.And the Lannisters always pay their debts.” 

She chews at her bottom lip, her hands clenched in her lap. He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just watches the sun dip lower on the horizon. “I hope Bran got away,” she says after a while. “I hope that they aren’t hurting Sansa.” He wants to reach out, but doesn’t.

They are damp and a cool breeze rolls in just as the sun is setting.His skin prickles with goosebumps, but it’s more than just the unexpected chill in the air.

“I wish Nymeria were here,” she sighs wistfully. “I almost had her trained to hunt rabbit, and bring it back.”

HIs stomach grumbles at the thought of a warm rabbit stew. “I take it that’s your dog, the one you ran off?”

“She’s a wolf,” Arya corrects proudly. “They would have killed her, skinned her for her pelt. That’s why I sent her away.”

“The Lannisters?” he guesses.

“Cersei Baratheon and her son Joffrey,” she scowls. “Nymeria bit Joffrey once.But it was his own stupid fault! She was protecting me.Father talked to Robert and they agreed that I could keep her so long as I kept her away from the tents.But then-”

_But then._

**_____**

The next day they are up before dawn.There are dark clouds in the sky, and there is a shiver making its way up Gendry’s spine.Again.

They begin lining up stakes and unraveling the first of the canvas tents.Arya helps unload the equipment from the wagon, and hops down with one of the sledgehammers in hand. He looks over at Yoren, he’s surely not going to let her swing that thing.It’s heavier than she is.But Yoren isn’t paying Arya any mind. He’s watching the sky. 

Just as Gendry is about to tell Arya to go back and start unloading coils of rope, a fat drop of rain hits him squarely in the forehead.Fuck.Everyone knows this is a bad sign.They get to work anyway.

Putting up the main tent pole is going to be a bitch now that it is raining hard.Riverruns’ pole riggers get into position. There are fewer men than what is needed, so Yoren waves Lommy and Hot Pie over to help.

Suddenly there is a loud crack, and a blinding spark of white. Gendry feels static race up his arms.Thunder roars overhead, and before he can wonder about the strange smell in the air men are yelling, and people are rushing forward.

Arya is cowering on her knees, her hands over her ears.Her hair is wet and clinging to her forehead, but she is unharmed, so he leaves her for the moment, and pushes his way through the crowd that has started to form.

He sees five bodies and his eyes move up the tent pole, where it is black and smoking, then back down to the bodies on the ground – a lightning strike, worse than bad luck. The bodies are blackened, but he recognizes the cloak Yoren had pulled on just minutes ago, and then Lommy’s pale white hair.

**_____**

They wrap the still smoking bodies in tarps and deposit them into an empty wagon.They will bury them with dignity tomorrow, after the rain, after they finish setting up.The show will still go on as planned.Gendry knows that is just the way, but it feels wrong and empty.

It’s still raining hard, so everything grinds to a halt and everyone takes shelter where they can.Gendry helps Tom and Anguy draw the horses and the wagons under the tent, the mood tense, morose. 

They make a quick early dinner, and everyone eats in glum silence.Gendry alternates watching the hard rain turn the ground around them into slop, and the hard look on Arya’s face.She doesn’t look at him at all.

After, the other men huddle around a meager fire with a bottle they pass around, but there is still thunder in the distance, and, he herds Arya into their baggage wagon, and then Hot Pie, because his hands are shaking and he’s just a kid.

_He is too_; a voice niggles in the back of his mind.But today he doesn’t feel like one at all.

They spread out their blankets amidst the tools he hasn’t yet organized. Arya faces him in the dark and they watch each other’s faces carefully, solemnly, thunder rumbling around them, and then later, Hot Pies snotty sounding snores.

He can see emotion sliding across her face.Grief is a curious thing. He imagines it’s there on his face too.Grief for Yoren and Lommy, old grief for his mother and the family he’s never had, it seems like that is all the world is made up of, one loss after another.

He lifts the corner of his bedroll and Arya scoots over without a word.She turns her back to him, shivering.He’s surprised to find that he is too.

“We had a nice house,” she whispers after a while.“I had to share a room with Sansa, but we had the softest beds. There was a stable of horses, and baby goats.We played knights and ladies in the yard until mother called us in for supper.”

“You? A lady?” he teases gently, quietly, so as not to wake Hot Pie.

“I was never!” she hisses. “I was only ever a knight.I had a helm of tarnished silver and would have wielded a sword if father had let me.”

“So you _are_ a rich girl,” he says pinching her shoulder.

She growls at him as if that offends her, he can feel it rumble through her, into his chest.If she bites him, he’ll deserve it, he’s the one provoking her this time.

“That was before everything went to shit, before Mother and Rickon got the fever.Before Robb and Jon left to fight for the Union.”

“Such language from a lady,” he chides softly. 

“Fuck off.”He can’t see her roll her eyes, but he knows she is.

“Then father lost the farm, and went to work for Robert, and now all of that is gone.”

The truth of it hangs between them, and he feels sorry for teasing her. 

“I’m going to go back there someday,” she yawns. 

“You will, milady,” he says softly, into her hair.She makes to jab him with her elbow, but it’s an empty threat, because she’s yawning again.

“You could come with me,” she says softly, sleepily. “Jon would like you.”

He scoffs, and she does jab him with an elbow then.Her words make him feel warm, but he knows they are just words, and not something that can actually happen. He’s spent his whole life being nobody, Arya Stark, has always been somebody.She had had a family, a nice house up North, a future.

He had grown fond of her, but he was already preparing himself for the fact that she would probably be going back to that family - whatever was left of it, eventually, now that Yoren was gone.There was nothing for her here. 

He can tell she’s fallen asleep by the way her body goes soft against him.His arm falls across her waist and he drifts off with the whisper of her hair on his cheek.

**_____**

They get the rest of the tents up, and lay the dead to rest on a hill overlooking the valley. Tom plays his fiddle, and some of the men sing the words to a song Gendry doesn’t know.

He looks for Arya but she’s slipped off somewhere and his heart clenches in his chest. It a strange and sour feeling and he tries not to feel so alone, but he is. Alone.

Lem and Anguy say a few words, and then they all somberly drift back towards camp.Three new men join their crew, if it’s still even a crew. He’s not sure who’s staying on after this now that Yoren is gone.

Arya is by the wagon as if she hasn’t been missing all morning and starts helping Gendry organize the tools. Out of the corner of his eye he sees one of the new men approach, “Arya Stark?” the man asks, turning her around by the shoulder.Gendry steps in front of her, he doesn’t have anything in hand, but he’d protect her if he had to, if it came to that.

“Harwin!” she exclaims pushing Gendry’s arm out of her way.“Harwin worked for my father on the farm,” she explains over her shoulder.

“I thought that was you.What happened to your-” he asks waving his hand toward the ragged hair that has Gendry just now realizes has started to grow out.She won’tbe able to pass for a boy much longer. Arya pats it down, embarrassed by her ragged state.

“Oh, I see,” the man called Harwin, says appraisingly, realizing she’s been disguisingherself. “That’s smart, in case anyone was looking to-”

“Looking to what?” Gendry finds himself saying harshly.Arya rolls her eyes at him, but he still doesn’t trust this man. Not after what she had told him of her father’s murder. 

“They will get what’s comin’ to em’-” Harwin starts to say.He bites his lip, perhaps realizing he’s said too much.

“Who will get what’s coming to them?” Arya demands.

“Don’t you worry about that child, the lord has a way,” Harwin deflects.Gendry takes one look at her and knows she’s not going to let it go. 

“I’m not a little girl,” she gripes at Harwin.

“No, I suppose you’re not,” Harwin concedes. “How old are you now anyway?”

“Thirteen,” she says.And the unbidden thought, _thirteen is a long way from seventeen, _works its way into Gendry’s mind. He turns away.

“Fourteen next month,” she adds._Fourteen is no better_, he thinks. Harwin, glances at him as if he’s heard his thoughts, and Gendry feels the tips of his ears redden.

“That’s sounds right,” Harwin says looking back to Arya. “You’ll have Lemon cake then.” Harwin smiles, like she _is_ just some little girl. Gendry grimaces, he can feel Arya’s annoyance.

“That was Sansa’s favorite,” Arya retorts dryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that the men sing at Yoren and Lommy's funeral is The Parting Glass - a traditional Scottish/Irish folk song.


	3. Fresno, Fort Miller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has never had a family, and he wonders if it is like this. If he was foolish enough to ask her, would she say that it was? That he could be her family?

It is a long two day ride to the next town.The new men in their crew, Thoros and Beric are a strange lot.They speak of a red god, and stare into the fires late into the night. It makes Gendry wary, and he sets out his bedroll as far as he can from them.

Arya settles down nearby. She fidgets and sighs, which makes it impossible for him to sleep, so he rolls over and grumbles “go to sleep.”

“Can’t,” she whispers.She has that hard look on her face. “Do you ever feel alone?Like you are the last person on earth?”

“Course.Reckon everyone feels like that sometimes.”

She gives him one of her indecipherable looks, like she is about to slug him and call him stupid, or hug him. He’s never sure.

He reaches for her blankets and tugs her closer to him.She rests her head on his arm.

He has never had a family, and he wonders if it is like this.If he was foolish enough to ask her, would she say that it was?That he could be her family?

“Ursa Major,” she whispers pulling him out of his thoughts.He has no idea what that means, but watches her finger tracing a shape above them.“The northern star, do you see it?”

He doesn’t.

He watches her finger trace it again.

“It’s always true she says, all the other stars move around it, but it holds true.You can always find your way home by the northern star.”

“How do you know things like that?”

“Father taught us,” she whispers.He almost asks more about her life before, her life on the farm up north with her family.It sounds nice. But she snuggles into him and he finds himself drifting off against her warmth.

**_____**

The next morning they are up before dawn.They lay out the poles, stakes and canvas tents.They drive iron pins with white ribbons into the ground to mark the spots where the poles will stand.

Gendry watches as Arya helps Tom with the tape measure, she has gotten good at marking off the lines at exactly 90 degrees for the center poles.Maybe things could stay like this, traveling the country, putting up tents, sleeping under the stars, making their own way. _Maybe, except she is Arya Stark, and this is not the life she’s supposed to have._

He shakes the thought away, before it can fester and cloud his thoughts any more than it already has.

Later, they sneak away to visit Lady Wonder, the mind reading horse that everyone has been talking about.It’s all rubbish of course, just another way to rob towners of their money, but Arya approaches the majestic looking creature with awe.She rests a gentle palm along the side of the horse’s nose. The softness is a side she doesn’t show often, he has come to realize it is usually reserved for animals and small children, her brother Jon.

It’s warm, and the aroma of roasting peanuts wafts by, almost blocking out the odor of horse dung.It’s almost the perfect kind of day.At least until he hears people approaching.

“Arya!” he hisses.Her eyes are transfixed on the big brown eyes of the horse in front of her, and it takes her a moment before she responds.He hoists her over the fence, and they sprint away before they can be caught by the horses, trainer - a woman with flaming red hair and red cloak to match.

“The red witch! Arya gasps, laughing as they run.

“No such thing,” he breathes, holding onto his sides, trying to catch his breath.

She rolls her eyes at him.“You know nothing.”

“So did the beast read your mind?”

“How should I know?” she shrugs.“Hey, I’ve got an idea.”

He can tell by the glint in her eye, that he is probably not going to like whatever her idea is, but it is a perfect kind of day, so he follows her into the crowd.

She quickly filches two pineapple fritters from the candy butchers cart.They get lost in the crowd lining up for the evening’s show, reveling in the sweet and tart dough, licking the powdered sugar from their fingers.

“You’re gonna get us both in trouble one of these days,” he says trying to sound stern.

**_____**

They take down the tents, ride out to the next city, and then set out everything all over again.There’s nothing much to do, so he and Arya sneak off and find skinny branches to joust with. Even though its child’s play, Gendry finds himself panting with the exertion, happy.He rolls his eyes every time Arya laments the loss of her helm, and the fact that she’s never had a real sword. 

It all feels strange, and later that night, when he can’t sleep he wonders when the other shoe will drop.When Arya will tire of him, or find her real family, leaving him with not even what he had before Yoren dragged her into camp.

Beric and Thoros spend most of the next morning trying to convince him that leaving the circus life, joining the railroad instead, would be in his best interest.It is where they are headed once they get to Bakersfield.

“Nine dollars a week,” Beric says to him as they unload, “a boy with arms like yours would do well.”

Arya scowls at them both, she doesn’t like Beric. 

After the tents are up, he sets off to find the blacksmith Tobho Mott.He does this in secret, while Arya heads off with Hot Pie to the cook house.He has an idea in mind, but he’s not sure he’ll be able to make it work, or if he’s got enough money left to pay for the metal.

Tom catches up to him first.“Boy! Wait up, I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you.”

“’bout what?” he asks feeling surly. He’s been waiting to sneak away all morning.

“’bout the girl,” Tom says cocking his head back towards where they have set up camp.

Gendry feels that shiver or worry roll up his spine.He knows Tom means Arya, which means he _knows._ “What girl are you talking about?” he asks anyway.

“Arya Stark,” Tom says slowly, narrowing his eyes as him.

“Don’t know no Arya Stark.”

“You’re protecting her.That’s good.I suspected, but Harwin, her fathers’ man confirmed.Don’t worry, we ain’t planning on giving her up or anything,” Tom says raising his hands, at what Gendry supposes is the hard look on his face. “It’s just - she’s a little thing, too young for-”

“Oh, no, I uh- I’m not,” Gendry stammers, understanding what Tom is getting at._But it’s a lie isn’t it? Because lately, he has been looking at her like she is more than just a kid, even though he knows he shouldn’t._He looks away before Tom can see the lie on his face.

“Her family comes from money,” Tom continues, “They’ll come for her eventually.You wouldn’t want to have them thinking anything improper happened between you two,” he says, leaving Gendry outside the blacksmiths.

For a moment he considers abandoning his plan, but then he heads inside, he’s been aching to do something with his hands anyway.

**_____**

He’d lost track of the day, and it is nearly supper when he finds her standing uncomfortably close to a strange man with the red streaks in his hair. Gendry doesn’t like the look of the knife thrower she is watching so intently.Doesn’t like the predatory way the man’s eyes rove over her face.

They both watch as he swiftly throws a knife towards a spinning wheel.It lands just above the ear of the girl whose wrists and ankles are buckled into the spinning contraption.She does not flinch, and when it comes to a stop he can see a red scratch across her cheekbone. It looks fresh.There is something unsettling about the way the blond haired girl gazes at them.

“You shouldn’t go anywhere near men like that,” he scolds, steering Arya away by the elbow.

“He doesn’t scare me.”

“Well, then you’re stupid.He scares me.”

She rolls her eyes at him for that, but they leave the strange man to his knives. They walk in companionable silence, there is a show tonight and things are busy. He’s never paid much attention to the performers, but Arya has been talking non-stop about the strong woman Brienne, and soon she is dragging him through a sea of people.

She pulls him to the back of tent that they had set up earlier that day, and they crawl underneath the flap.He’s watched a show here and there, but he’s never been that interested in any of the acts, he had always felt that something rang false about the show being put on for low country rubes. It was only ever about money, and when you didn’t have more than a few coins to rub together, spending it on frivolous entertainment seemed foolhardy.

But they weren’t spending any money, and they weren’t rubes, and he does not have the heart to not follow Arya. 

Inside the ring there is a tall woman with cropped blond hair in a breastplate.She lifts a barbell with two impossibly big weights on either end, bending her knees with the effort.The crowd cheers and Gendry grins at the excitement on Arya’s face, and they stay until the end of the act.

“She’s wonderful,” Arya gushes as they exit with everyone else.“There’s not a man in that tent who can lift as much as she does.”

They make their way through the backyard, weaving through the performer’s tents.They stop where a small crowd has formed.A young man with curly blond hair juggles pins, the gems on his costume sparkling in the light from a nearby fire.

“Haven’t seen you around before,” a woman in sequined costume says brushing up against him, a hand on his arm. “What’s your act?”

“Aint’ got an act,” Gendry replies flushing, her costume doesn’t do much to cover the curves of her body.

“That’s too bad,” you have the face for it, “the arms too.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, he looks to Arya who scoffs loudly, and kicks the dirt.The woman goes on, as if she hasn’t noticed.

“I’m Margery.I’m on the trapeze.”

”Oh, that’s . . . good,” he says feeling foolish.Arya kicks the dirt again, but still isn’t looking at him.

“Have you seen our act?” the woman in the sequined costume suit asks, nodding her head towards the juggling man who is now bowing to the small crowd.

“No, I’m just a sledgeman.”

“Well, sledgeman, do you have a name?”

“Gendry,” he stammers, feeling that stupid flush on his face again.When he looks for Arya to get him out of the conversation, he sees that she has disappeared into the crowd

“Nice to meet you Gendry, you should come by and see our act.My brother Loras and I put on quite a show.”

**_____**

“Thanks for running off like that,” he scowls later, when he finally finds her sitting on a barrel eating a chicken leg and spitting the bones into the dirt.

“I didn’t run off,” she chews.“Besides you seemed otherwise engaged.”

“Otherwise engaged?What does that mean?”

“Margery on the trapeze has a nice bosom don’t you think?”

“What?” he stammers.“Why were you even looking at her bosom?”

“Why were you?”

“I wasn’t!”

She scoffs at him, finishing her chicken leg and licking fingers.“Your face is going to get stuck like that,” she glowers.

He scowls back.

He has no idea why they are even cross with each other.It had been such a nice night.He didn’t give one whit about Margery on the trapeze.But Arya’s japes felt mean spirited, and he knows for certain that it was a bad idea to mingle with likes of Margery on the trapeze.

Tom is at his fiddle again, and when he plays Maid on the Green, Gendry can’t help but look over at Arya. In another world, another time, he might ask her to dance.But in this one, they both sit glumly, watching everyone else.

**_____**

When he wakes up, her bedroll is gone. She isn’t at the cook house.They’re row last night had tossed and turned in his head, and he’d hardly slept at all, which was only going to make todays work harder.

After breakfast, he decides to start unloading the equipment in preparation for taking down the tents.He’s avoiding anyone who might want to talk, he’s not in the mood, and keeps his head down.And that is how he manages to run right into Arya as she’s scooting out of one of tents.And older woman follows her out and scowls at him before turning back to Arya, “that is much better lass,” the woman says appraising her work.

“Thanks,” Arya replies, glaring at Gendry.

Her lopsided hair, though still short, has been cut and shaped and now ends at a sharp angle at her chin.It makes her look older than she is, wolfish.And although still wearing trousers and a vest, they have been tailored to fit her better. _She’s going to be beautiful one day_, his traitorous mind observes before he can squash the thought down.

“What?” she asks, exasperated, stopping hard, and turning on her heel.

“You look like a proper little girl now.”

She gives him a skeptical look, _“stupid_,” she grimaces under her breath.“I’m not a little girl,” she growls poking him in the chest.

“Ok, not a little girl,” he acquiesces, raising his hands in surrender.“Are we still not talking?”

“We were never not talking.”

He scoffs until she stops short, and glares at him.

“Hot Pie’s not gonna know what to do with himself when he sees you,” he says, pinching a stray lock of her newly shorn hair between two fingers.

“Come on,” she rolls her eyes, “don’t we have work to do?”


	4. Visalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I thought about what you said, about Illyn Payne. You’re right, I will never get close enough,” she says bending her wrist, “but I can still put a dagger in his eye.” The knife hits the tree with a solid thunk. She looks at him with something like satisfaction.

The same calliope music plays over and over again, _Dixie, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Oh! Susana_.It gives him a headache, he hates calliope music, and why the hell is it still going when there aren’t even any rubes to entertain?

It’s hot and he’s grouchy, annoyed that that blond haired girl has been loitering around all morning.He’d asked Arya what her name was, and she’d only shrugged. “She says she’s no one.” 

Typical.

Arya hadn’t been bothered, but it annoyed him.Truthfully, it unsettled him.It unsettled him that the girl always seemed to be around Arya these days, wanting – _something_.He’s not sure what, or why it makes him want to pound something into the ground. It’s not that Arya couldn’t have friends other than him, but people couldn’t be trusted.This girl, this no one, couldn’t be trusted.The knife thrower couldn’t be trusted.But he knew better than to try to tell Arya any of that.Arya always thought she knew better.

They quickly finish packing the wagons, these days it went so much quicker with Arya around.They are an efficient team, and she had even made improvements to the way he organized the tools and supplies for easy access. It is a couple days ride at least to the next stop, and he is looking forward to the quiet, to setting up camp under the stars. To being away from tight rope walkers, clowns, jugglers, and fucking knife throwers. 

Tom will start up with his fiddle, maybe that ballad he’s been working out, the one Gendry thinks is quite good, although he’d never admit it Tom or anyone else.Later, he’ll get Arya to tell him more stories about Winterfell, her brother Jon, her lost wolf. 

He’s about to call out to Arya to get a move on, before they leave without her. But when he turns to find her, the blond haired girl is tugging Arya’s arm and nodding back towards where the rest of the performer’s wagons are.Arya at least has the decency to look apologetic.“I’ll catch up with you in Visalia,” she shouts as the blond haired girl drags her away. 

If Yoren were here, he wouldn’t allow it.Sledgemen and pole riggers don’t ride with the performers.But he’s not Yoren, and Arya’s never been a Sledgeman or a pole rigger has she?At least he won’t have to worry about hiding his unfinished gift.

**_____**

Visalia is not much different than anywhere else they stop; hot and dusty, desolate, and Gendry finds himself in a foul mood. He keeps his head down, and his mouth shut while they pound stake after stake into the ground, the roll of his shoulder, the swing of his arm, a comforting sort of monotony.

Thoros and Beric plan to join a surveying party for the Union Pacific after this stop.Its dangerous work and Gendry only grunts when they ask him for umpteenth time to join them.

“The railways are changing the world,” Thoros says, ignoring his indifference.“You could be part of that, part of something bigger than this fleapit sideshow.”

“We will be blazing a trail all the way to the ocean,” Beric adds. “You got no family, nothing holding you back.You should consider it; adventure, money in your pocket, a future with the railway if you want it. It’d do you well son.” 

For a while, there is nothing to do, and Beric pulls a well-worn book from his pocket, folding it in half. “What’s that you go there?”Lem asks, mostly out of boredom.

“Song of the open road,” Beric says without looking up.“You know Whitman?”

Lem shakes his head. He has no idea what Beric is talking about.For the record, Gendry wouldn’t either, except Beric is always reading from that book, and quoting passages Gendry reckons he finds important.

“Strong and content I travel the open road,” Beric starts to read.Gendry usually tunes him out, but the part about constellations gets stuck in his head, makes him think of Arya setting up camp with people he doesn’t know and doesn’t trust.

He’s still in a foul mood when the rest of Riverruns Wagons roll up late in the day.He’s polishing Arya’s gift and trying to not watch the horizon for them.She doesn’t join their crew that night, and he tosses and turns, finding sleep impossible, maybe the gift was a stupid idea.

The next morning he trudges to the cook house alongside Harwin.They sit at a long table, and Gendry picks at his hot cakes. He can’t help how his eyes scan the other tables looking for her.

“Hi,” she surprises him, flicking his ear, and plopping down next to him.

He’s missed her.“Hello,” he grunts.

“That’s it? Hello?”

“Did you have a nice trip?” he asks with false enthusiasm.

She scowls at him, “so stupid.”

He scowls back.

She sighs, “I missed you. Did you miss me?”

He shrugs.

She kicks his foot under the table. “Come on,” she says tugging his sleeve, “there’s something I want to show you.” 

They head past the tents, and in to camp, Arya pulling him along.He tries to remain cross, but it’s hard when she’s so damn insistent. “Wait,” he says remembering her gift.

When he backs out the wagon with her gift in hand she is staring at him curiously.

“You didn’t think I would forget did you?”

“Maybe,” she shrugs. 

He pushes the wrapped packaged into her arms, and he watches her face, his heart in his throat.

She holds the helm appraisingly in both hands, biting her lip, before looking up at him. “It’s perfect.”

“The wolves aren’t quite right,” he says running a finger over the etchings he’d labored over, “the likeness is clumsy, but-”

“It’s perfect," she repeats, slapping his hand away. 

And maybe it’s not so bad of a gift, because she’s beaming at him and he finds himself unable to do anything other than grin back at her.“Happy birthday Arya.”

She wraps one arm tightly around his waist and buries her head against his chest, the helm dangling from her fingers, against his thigh. “I love it,” she mumbles into his chest, her voice thick with emotion.

Not for the first time, he wonders if this is what it feels like to be someone’s family. If this rush of affection and fondness is something he can have and return.He wraps his arms around her, and they stand like that for what feels like a long time. “You wanted to show me something?”

“Come on,” she says taking his hand and pulling him away from the wagon.

Once they are a distance away she stops at an unassuming tree.There isn’t anything special as far as he can tell. He’s about to ask her what in seven hells could possibly be out here, when she pushes aside her jacket and unveils a knife in a sheath strapped to her hip.

“Where’d you get that?”

But he knows before she says it, he’s seen a knife like that before.

“Jaqen,” she says coolly, avoiding his gaze.

“Why?No one just gives away a knife like that without a reason,” he says feeling cross all over again. “What did he want in return?”

“Why are you so suspicious of everyone?” she huffs, annoyed.

“Because people are terrible!”

She shrugs. “I need him.”

“You need him for what?” he questions sourly.

“You’ll see,” she says, rolling her eyes.

He shakes his head, she is insufferable, naïve. If he was her flesh and blood family, he’d knock her out and put her in the back of the wagon and drag her all the way back to her family in the North.But he’s not, so all he can do is stand her like a ninny and worry. “Why do you need a thing like that anyway?”

“I’m training. That’s what I wanted to show you. I’m good.”

“Training for what? To be a sideshow act?”

“I don’t care about the circus,” she snaps like he is being dense on purpose.She faces a tree a short distance away, the blade against her fingertips, handle facing outward. “I thought about what you said, about Illyn Payne.You’re right, I will never get close enough,” she says bending her wrist, “but I can still put a dagger in his eye.”

The knife hits the tree with a solid thunk. She looks at him with something like satisfaction.“Cersei and Joffrey will be easier targets I reckon. I can do it clean, without anyone seeing me.”

He’s about to tell her that what she is talking about is dangerous.That she could get hurt, or worse, but then he notices the linen bandages wrapped around several of her fingers.“What’s this,” he asks grabbing for her hand. “Has he hurt you?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, but does not pull her hand away. 

He finds himself tracing circles on her skin with his thumb. There is something indecipherable in the way her eyes are boring into his.He knows her well, but there is a part of her that is distant, that he feels like he never knew at all. 

“You can’t learn anything worth doing without getting a few scars to show for it.”

“He tell you that?”

“Gendry-”

“You don’t have to do this.Your family wouldn’t want-”

“How would you know what my family would want?” she says sharply.

Her words sting and he drops her hand.

“They are honorable people, you said so yourself,” he says, his throat tight with some emotion he can’t discern.They’d never said words this harsh to each other.It feels all wrong.“Do you think your father-your brothers – Jon - would want you plotting murder, with some side show charlatan, more than twice your age? Do you even know what men like that think when they see a girl like-”

“I am not a little girl!”

He shakes his head frustrated, he’d like to wring that knife throwers neck right about now.

“And I can take care of myself,” she hisses.

“Aye, as you have said a million times.” He can’t keep the annoyance out of his voice, and she narrows her eyes at him. 

He refuses to back down, to agree with this plan of hers. “You’re no assassin Arya Stark. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“They killed my father, for Robert’s stupid secrets, for money.” 

He watches fury, grief, sadness play across her face, and then a darkness that turns her features cold, unmoving.It sends a chill up his spine. 

“I can never go home again, and I can’t just let this go.”

“Arya you can. Go home I mean,” he says, but the words sound hollow, foolish.

“I can’t.And I can’t live like this either, moving from town to town like some kind of roustabout while Ilyn Payne and the Lannisters get away with murder. You’d understand if you had-”

_Had a father, a family_, he thinks, finishing her thought.It’s an awkward and ugly thing between them, something he can tell she wishes she hadn’t started to say.But it’s too late.

“This is who I am,” she says curtly, backing away from him, her eyes blazing. “Either be with me, or don’t.But if you aren’t, then stay out of my way.”

He does not follow her back to camp.

**_____**

He sets out his bedroll and watches the stars cross the sky.In the morning they set to work breaking down the tents.He knows better than to look for Arya.

They ride out ahead of the rest of the wagons, and no one says a word to him.Good, he doesn’t feel like talking to anyone anyway. He had been foolish to think of her the way he had.She wasn’t his family, she wasn’t his responsibility, and she was never going to be. She didn’t _need _him. 

What she intends to do is foolish, but who is he to stop her?He’s just a piss poor roustabout, with nothing to offer, no family, nothing to call his own.Maybe Thoros and Beric were right, maybe it was time to find his own way. Maybe it was time to forget about Arya Stark.


	5. Willmington, Los Angeles, Braavos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been five years since he’d last seen Arya Stark. Since he left with Beric and the other men, but more often than not, she was in his thoughts, and his dreams, apparently.

When he opens his eyes, Arya is above him, the ends of her hair tickling his jaw. It is longer now, and he reaches up and tugs a strand of it between two fingers. 

He’d like to kiss her. The thought makes his cock twitch.He feels the tip of his ears burn red. She gives him that look, like she is about to get them both into trouble.But instead of pulling him to his feet, she leans down and kisses the side of his neck, his earlobe, his jaw. He can’t help the groan that escapes.

“Wake up,” she whispers against his lips, “Gendry-”

_WAKE UP_

His eyes flutter open, and Harwin is kicking his shoulder with a muddy boot.“You’re having a nightmare.”

It has been five years since he’d last seen Arya Stark.Since he left with Beric and the other men, but more often than not, she was in his thoughts, and his dreams, apparently. 

Harwin hands him a tin mug and he drinks the gritty coffee with a grimace.They had made camp one last time, just he and Harwin.Thoros was gone four years now, and Beric in an accident over a year ago.He and Harwin had worked alongside the other men in their group, but it had never been the same, and now that this patch of rail was done, so were they. They would meet with a representative from the Union Pacific about labor contractor jobs, and if Gendry was being honest probably go their own ways. The thought makes him glum.

They had started out surveying for the Union Pacific, before changing course in Wilmington.It was a local line, and only 22 miles of track that needed to be laid. It kept them away from tribal raiders, blockades, and bears, like the one who’d mauled Thoros before they could do a thing about it. Sometimes he still pounded steel, worked alongside civil war vets, Irishmen, Chinese immigrants, and boys younger than him laying ties, pounding spikes.

In the small towns they rode through they were often treated well.They were almost always given a decent place to sleep, a barn, or an extra room.Better food than the rations they had set out with, and in some towns, girls if they wanted them, although he’d only done that once.

A finished rail line was about to change the fortunes and futures of farmers across the golden state.Beric had been right in some ways, the world was about to change, and Gendry was at the forefront of it, in a way he never could have as a Sledgeman.Still, sometimes, he wondered if he had made the right choice leaving as he had.He wondered if Arya had carried out her plan, if she was even still alive, if he could have done anything differently.

**_____**

“It is shit work,” Davos Seaworth, the Union Pac rep says up front.“But the pay is good, better than surveying, and if you bullshit well enough, you might even make foreman.”

Harwin barks out a laugh.Gendry isn’t sure if he’s ever been good at bullshitting anyone, maybe he should fuck off and find something else to do.Seaworth seems to read his mind.“How about we get something to eat and talk some more,” he says kindly, clapping a hand Gendry notices is missing four fingertips, on his shoulder.

“Don’t have the money for a fancy dinner,” Gendry says ducking his head.Even now, with a little money in his pocket, it’s still not enough. It’s a thought that never stops stinging.

“My treat,” Seaworth says before Gendry can get even one word out in protest.“Or should I say it’s on the Union Pacific?We should spend all their hard earned money don’t you think?”

The tavern is in an adobe with dirt floors.Almost every seat is filled, and the three of them are lucky to find a wobbly table in the corner. The smell of the onion soup and hunks of fresh country bread make it hard to listen to a thing that Seaworth is saying.Gendry realizes it’s been awhile since he’s eaten anything that hasn’t been dried or pickled.He wonders if Harwin is thinking the same thing, but Harwin is looking past him, over his shoulder, a hunk of bread half-way to his mouth.“Holy mother of-” 

“What?” Gendry frowns.They aren’t looking for trouble, but Harwin looks like he’s seen a ghost, so with his luck, trouble will probably find them.

“Jon Snow,” Harwin calls standing up, making the table shake. 

“Is everything ok son?” Seaworth asks standing, putting his good hand on Harwin’s shoulder. He raises his eyebrows at Gendry. 

“Jon Snow?” Harwin calls more clearly this time, and a dark haired man turns around, and glares.“You’re supposed to be dead.”

Gendry takes in the crescent shaped scar running from the man’s forehead near his hairline to his cheek bone. The man starts towards them with a pronounced limp.Gendry drops his spoon reluctantly.If there’s going to be a fight, he’d rather be on his feet.

**_____**

If anyone had told him, at any point in the past five years, that he’d be in train car with Arya’s beloved older brother, with just a playbill to go by, he’d have told that person to go fuck themselves and leave him be.But here he is.It feels surreal.

Perhaps helping Jon find his sister and bring her home where she belongs will make it right.Will be the apology he owes Arya for leaving instead of standing by her, an apology for being bullish and selfish and insecure. It’s a decision that he has endlessly mulled over, he can’t change it, but he can at least do this.

Harwin still has friends on the circuit, and when he slides into the seat next to Gendry, they’ve got a place to start. Harwin also fills them in on the news about Ilyn Payne’s murder. Gendry keeps his head down as they pick up steam, the city melting away behind them.He does not want Jon Snow to see the thoughts on his face.

“These are dark times,” Jon muses.“Sansa say’s the Baratheon boy’s death was – strange.I am glad she was able to get out of there when she did.I can’t help but fear for Arya, wherever she is.”

Gendry shifts uncomfortably, two of the three names on Arya’s list were dead, it could not be a coincidence. Would Arya want her brother to know that she had set right the wrongs done to her family?Perhaps, or not, but he knows for certain it’s not his to tell.Betraying her is something he will not do.

They strike out at the first stop, finding only an empty field of trampled grass.Jon procures rooms at the only tavern in town for the night, despite Gendry’s objections; he’s just fine making camp under the stars. The annoyed huff Jon makes at Gendry’s protests reminds him of Arya so much he finds himself relenting.

“He’s a good lad,” he hears Harwin saying to Jon the next morning.“He kept her safe from those that would have seen her harm.”

Gendry does not hear Jon’s low response, doesn’t know if he wants to.Also, he’d like to throttle Harwin, right here outside this stupid tavern. He doesn’t need Jon looking at him suspiciously every two seconds.He has a bad habit of wearing his sodding heart on this sleeve, and it wouldn’t take much for Jon Snow to see how it beats for Arya, still, after all this time. He knows better than anyone that his feelings can’t go anywhere, especially now when she’s going back home to her family.When it’s all over, perhaps he will head down to San Diego, find Davos Seaworth, and start over.

**_____**

They retrace Rivveruns steps until the finally catch up to them in Jerome. “No Arya Stark here,” a dark skinned man, whose lips are drawn in a tight, suspicious line, says. 

Gendry does not recognize him, does not recognize any of the people milling about who cast wary glances their way.The tents look ragged, and there is an unkempt air about the small camp, Gendry surmises that Rivverun has fallen on hard times, as many of the smaller circuses have. 

“She’d be with the knife thrower,” Gendry tries, surely, someone knows her, despite the unfamiliar faces.“She might be passing for a boy, an apprentice maybe.”He can feel Jon Snow’s gaze landing somewhere at the back of his head, and knows he’ll have to explain _that_ later.

A woman in an exotic looking dress whispers something in the dark skinned man’s ear and they walk away without sparing them another glance.

“Well, shit,” Harwin exhales. 

Gendry watches them retreat his hands clenched in fists at his side.

“She wears a silver helm,” a small, bowlegged man says from behind the torn flap of a dingy gold and crimson striped tent.He looks up at Gendry, his mismatched gaze, shrewd.

“Who are you?” Gendry grumbles looking him up and down as the man hobbles past the opening of the tent.

“They call me The Imp,” he says bowing with a flourish.

“A freak,” Harwin marvels. 

“I’m a showstopper, the main attraction,” The Imp, says dryly, “the gentle folk love peering and poking, glad that it’s me and not them in this body.”

“You know my sister?” Jon interrupts.“Arya?”

The Imp sets his mismatched eyes on Jon appraisingly.“I might.” 

Gendry clenches his fists, annoyed. Jon exhales loudly, and Gendry can feel impatience rolling off of him in waves. The war may have left him battered, but Gendry had no doubt that Jon Snow would and could take a man out in a fight if it came to that.He was not someone to be trifled with, not when it came to family anyway. The Imp looks between him and Jon with an upraised brow.

“I’ll make it worth your while to tell us how to find her,” Jon says brusquely, pulling a billfold from his coat pocket.

“Very well then,” The Imp says, taking Jon’s money and pushing it into a pocket without looking at how much. “She keeps her face covered, so she may be your sister, she may not be. She wears a helm with wolves carved along its side, knows her way around knives. She’s long gone from here though, left with the knife thrower, Braavos I think.”

**_____**

The House of Black and White is a windowless gray stone building with a black tile roof, on a street where the buildings are built so close they seem to be trying to shoulder each other out of the way. It is a street of low end theaters, parlors of ill repute, and taverns where actresses hustle drinks. He knows the moment Jon Snow realizes this, by the way his shoulders hunch and his features turn stony, cold._They have that in common too_, Gendry thinks.

They pass through double wooden doors, the carved, solemn, moon face in the center, sparking an uncertain shiver that runs up Gendry’s spine.There is something about this place that feels wrong, that makes him wish that he’d never left Arya in the first place, if it was only for her to end up here.

There is a woman on stage in flesh colored tights and a colorful knee high dress that fans out as she spins around the stage stomping her feet to the music.He exhales, relieved for the moment.It isn’t anything more risqué than he’s seen during his time with Baratheon Brothers or Rivverun.Some of the acts are bawdy, most are terrible, it is impossible to quell his restlessness, he tries to spot Arya each time someone new steps on stage, but she never appears.

At least not until a few men drag out a contraption Gendry has seen before. Jaqen H'ghar ’s spinning wheel.There is no question that she is here.Gendry wonders what Jon will think of the strange man.If Jon will find him as unsettling as Gendry had. But Jaqen H’ghar does not walk onto the stage. Instead a hulking man with scars on his face, wearing a buffoonish costume stalks up to the contraption while two women strap him in.He ignores the audience, glares at the side of the stage.The crowd grows quiet, and then a figure wearing a helm, shaped by Gendry’s own fingers appears.Gendry tries to swallow down the rush of emotion that snakes its way up his chest.Jon Snow leans forward, his brow furrowed.

She is wearing a short metallic costume, designed to look like armor, and thick leggings tucked into short heeled boots.The first knife strikes the turning wheel just a hairsbreadth away from the ugly man’s ear with a firm thud, and the audience applauds politely.Arya, resets, waits, Gendry holds his breath.She unfurls two more knives in rapid succession, each one skillfully hitting the mark, one on the other side of his head, the other alongside his torso. The wheel spins faster. Arya’s deft fingers position the next knives, her pitch, precise, unflinching. _She’s strong_, Gendry thinks, as she hits the rest of her marks, the last between the angry man’s legs.The audience gasps, and then burst into applause.

Jon Snow’s gaze is inscrutable, and when Gendry looks back to the stage, Arya has pulled off her helm and is shaking her hair out over her shoulder._He is so fucked._ She bows to the audience, and then raises her eyes towards the balcony where they stand. For a moment their eyes meet and he is certain he sees a flicker of recognition pass over her features, but then the curtain comes down. “What in seven hells?” Jon mutters.


	6. Winterfell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So you’re here to help my brother drag me home then?” She glides towards him sleek as a cat, her tone neutral, but defiance sparking in her grey eyes. He blinks the sleep out of his own, it must be a dream. He’s had ones like this before. Although usually Arya’s not glaring at him like she is now.
> 
> “Well?”

“You used to be taller,” she observes, brow arched, hands clasped behind her back, still clad in her costume armor. 

It would be easy to mistake her tone as an expression as coldness, but Gendry does not miss the slight quirk of her lips.It is so like the Arya he knows, an Arya that has grown as fierce and as lovely as he’s imagined she would. _And Gods knows he’s imagined._

“The last time I saw you were just a skinny little thing, all scraped knees and tangled hair,” Jon teases gruffly, the same ice in his tone.But the tension in the slope of his shoulders eases a fraction.The guarded mask Arya wears slips away at that.

Gendry watches as Arya launches herself into her brother’s arms, still holding the helm he’d made her all those years ago.His heart sings traitorously at the realization that she had kept it with her all this time.

“Is it really you?” she asks pulling away from her brother, appraising the new scars, the passage of time on his face.“You’re supposed to be dead,” she admonishes softly, searching Jon’s face for answers.

“Sometimes it feels like I was.” 

Arya’s eyes are on her brother’s face, her own expression inscrutable. But then she’s grinning, and the moment feels intimate, far too intimate for Gendry to be watching as intently as he was.He makes to retreat, and Arya’s gaze flicks past Jon, over his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

“Gendry.” 

He drops his eyes.As usual, he’s useless when it comes to courtesies, or words or thoughts, “M’lady,” he greets her, the word unintentionally gruff.

“You look well.”

He clutches his hat so hard it feels like it might rip in two, Harwin coughs into his fist and Gendry has to resist the urge to box the other man’s ears.He bows awkwardly instead, and when their eyes meet over her brother’s shoulder, he finds that Arya is watching him carefully.It is a moment that stretches out longer than it should, uncomfortable and thrilling all at once.

“It’s good to see you again,” she says in that flat way that he hates that inexplicably reminds him of  Jaqen H'ghar .And he realizes he doesn’t know if she means it, or if it’s just a courtesy. If what she really wants to do is punch him in the gut. 

“Aye, it’s good to see you again as well,” he stammers, stumbling over every other word like the fool he is.

“Miss. Stark,” Harwin bows, “Your skills are quite impressive. Why, you’re a regular Buffalo Bill.”

“It’s Arya.Just Arya,” she sighs, taking the arm Jon has offered.

“There is a much to discuss little sister.” 

Harwin raises his eyebrows questioningly, but Gendry finds that he is not in the mood.Harwin swiftly puts his hat back on his head, in response to his dark look and theatrically and steps out of his way. A scowl twists its way onto Gendry’s face.

Arya lets Jon steer her away from balcony, and Gendry follows several paces behind.“We thought you lost to us forever.I wish father had never taken you all so far away from home.” 

They make their way down the staircase, back to the main floor where they had first entered.Gendry’s eyes land on a disturbing mural of disembodied heads adorning an adjacent wall, their faces painted in strokes of gray and blue, their eyes forever closed.It sends a shiver up this spine.

“We should talk.” Jon says as they reach the bottom step, “But perhaps somewhere else.”

Arya pulls away, just slightly, but Gendry finds himself discomfited by the action.He’d imagined Arya would be much more pleased to see her beloved brother after thinking him dead for all these years. “It will have to wait. We’ve another show to do tonight.”

Jon lets her arm go, tension rolling off of him. “We’ve come all this way, and you don’t have time to talk?That’s not-” Jon starts, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose in consternation, “The big man? Is he forcing you to do this?” he motions dismissively at the theatre around them.

“Forcing me?” she scoffs.“The Hound?He owes me, if anything I’m forcing him!”

“That is his name?” Jon questions, his brow furrowed, as they reach the wooden doors.Gendry conjures up the image of the surly looking man on the spinning wheel and decides it’s an apt name.

“That is what he goes by,” Arya shrugs. 

“Arya-”

“You do not have to worry about him brother.I can take care of myself,” she remarks resolutely, guiding them towards the doors. “I am not a little girl anymore.” Her eyes flick over to Gendry’s once more, and he drops his own, before his traitorous heart can betray any of his emotions. 

She steps back, before Jon can argue any further, leaving them standing on the wide gray steps outside the double wooden doors.“There is a place you can stay, follow the road until you reach the weeping woman, then make a sharp left.It doesn’t look like much, but the rooms are clean and the prices are fair. When you get there speak the words _Valar morghulis, _and they will know I sent you.”

**____**

A deep-set fog has rolled in by the time they find the place Arya has sent them to, Jon stewing the entire way.Gendry knows well enough to keep his mouth shut, his head down.He is shown to a room that he pays for with the last of his funds.He’ll be shoeing horses, or hammering out nails before making his way to San Diego, he hopes Mr. Seaworth will still have a job for him when he gets there.

Once the door is closed he lets out a breath, his thoughts churning.He carefully sets his hat on a small table near the bed, and hangs his jacket on the chair. He wants nothing more than to go back to that place, to watch Arya’s act from the balcony once again, to sweep her away and ask all the questions spinning around in his head, to be jabbed in the ribs by her pointy elbows, while she calls him stupid_, to apologize. _

Instead, he kicks off his shoes and collapses onto the uncomfortable bed.He knows he shouldn’t want any of those things, but he does.

It is the dead of night when he awakens with a start.There is a shadow pressed against the door, and for a moment, before he recognizes that it is her, he laments the fact that he has no weapons. 

“So you’re here to help my brother drag me home then?” She glides towards him sleek as a cat, her tone neutral, but defiance sparking in her gray eyes.He blinks the sleep out of his own, it must be a dream. He’s had ones like this before.Although usually Arya’s not glaring at him like she is now.

“Well?”

He feels mute, dumb, which is not a surprise considering. “What?”

“Don’t be stupid. Tell it true.”

Now that he is wide awake, he feels gruff and out of sorts.It is not how he imagined things would go at all. She has changed into wide legged trousers and a belted jacket that shows off the curves she didn’t have the last time he’d seen her.He shouldn’t be noticing, but he can’t stop noticing. “Who said anything about dragging you anywhere? Don’t you want to see your family?”He reaches for his discarded vest, buttoning it up with shaky fingers, and pulling on his jacket as if that would dispel the way the air in suddenly sharp edged.“You shouldn’t be here,” he sighs, torn between wanting her to stay and knowing what it would look like if she did.They weren’t children anymore.

“Because it’s not proper?” she sneers contemptuously, whether at him or his second hand jacket he’s unsure.

“You know it’s not.Your brother would not be pleased.”

“I can handle my brother.” 

He moves to guide her to the door, “I don’t doubt that, doesn’t change things though does it?You’re a la-”

“Do not call me that,” she spits out, pronouncing each word with such cold venom, it would seem as though he was speaking some kind of insult. 

He throws his hands up in defeat, pent up tension rolling through him.“Have you always been this insufferable?”he hisses,remembering that it is the dead of night and the walls were thin enough for their words to carry.

“Have you always been this annoying?” she retorts scornfully.

“I’m the annoying one?” he questions hotly. This is going all wrong, but still, “that’s rich coming from the one skulking around in the dark breaking into people’s rooms.”

“I didn’t break in, you left it unlocked.”

“That’s hardly the point.”

She rolls her eyes and paces, “Jon finds this place unsuitable,” she seethes.

“Arya, he doesn’t care about that, and you know it.”

“I won’t go,” she huffs, unperturbed, stepping towards him, her chin upturned. “I won’t wear a bustle, or ribbons in my hair. I’ve already told Jon the same. I’ve got plans, things I planned on doing before you lot ever showed up. I’d almost saved up enough to get the hell out of here on my own.”

“Fine!”He’s not even sure what they are arguing about, but she is so close he can almost reach out and touch her – but he keeps his fists balled at his sides. 

She glowers up at him, and he has half a mind to tell her to stop acting like such a terror. But, then, he remembers what she has been through, and softens.“They miss you,” he tries to reason.“Don’t you want to go home?See your family?”

“I’m not sure they are anymore.”

“Now who’s being stupid?” he huffs, returning her glare. 

“You have no idea do you?” she fumes.

“Seven hells Arya!” he bellows, despite, knowing he should keep his voice down. “I guess I don’t, why don’t you to explain to it me since I am so dense on the matter?”

“I won’t sit on ladies auxiliary, or pretend to care about lemon cake recipes,” she growls, her lips in a fierce, tight line, her gray eyes sparking dangerously. “And I will not let some simpering fool fill his name out on my dance card, or ask for my hand. I won’t give up everything that is me for anyone!”

Her eyes bore into him, and he is aflame.His gaze drops to her lips before he can stop himself, the only sound their heated breaths. He tears his eyes away from her lips, only to find himself pinned by the intensity of her gaze.“You never answered my question.”

_What question_, he thinks, admiring the arch of her brow, the pretty flush on her cheeks.

“Why did you come all this way Gendry?” 

Once, while with Baratheon Brothers, Gendry had watched the tightrope act from behind the stands with a couple of the other sledgemen. The man’s foot had dangled off the ledge before he’d stepped forward, the pole dipping to one end and then the other, the wire twisting under his feet, one wrong move and he’d certainly fall to his death. 

Now, he’s the man on the tightrope, and it feels like every word could be a misstep. “Was just trying to do the right thing,” he mutters.It was only a half lie.

Something, disappointment or maybe frustration, briefly flickers across her face, and he instantly wishes he could take it back.

“Gendry the gallant,” she scoffs, turning away. She yanks the door open, pausing in the doorway.“You broke my heart,” she confesses, her back to him, her fierceness replaced by a sudden weariness, that makes his heart clench in his chest.“Leaving the way you did.”Then she is gone before he can utter a single word in return.

**_____**

The next morning, Gendry is surprised to see Jon up at such an early hour.He hadn’t gotten much sleep after Arya had left, her words, bouncing around in his unsettled mind_.Had he been in her heart, the way she had been in his? _

Had he made a complete disaster of everything?

He was hoping to be alone with his misery and a cup of coffee, before making a decision about what was to come next.But it would be rude of him to creep back to his room, so he takes a seat next Jon at the long table. Jon nods before going back to his breakfast, and Gendry is thankful that Jon doesn’t seem to be much interested in conversation either. 

Gendry is on his second coffee, by the time Harwin joins them. “You’re both brooding?” Harwin groans, slipping into the seat next to him.“Wonderful.”

Jon goes back to his newspaper with a glare, and Gendry has to admit he feels the same.At least Harwin gets the hint and eats his breakfast in silence. 

“I think I could use some fresh air,” Harwin hurriedly declares a short time later, folding his napkin and placing it on the table.Gendry looks up just in time to see him dip his hat to Arya as he passes her in the doorway.

She stalks towards them, and he feels his heart speed up.She’s probably going to tell him he can fuck right off, and what ground will he have to stand on?He’d left her because he was a stubborn fool, and he was too much of a coward to tell her how he felt, then and now.And now, he’d know how it would be to have his heart broken. It would serve him right.

“First off, I don’t need to be rescued,” she states without preamble dropping into the seat across from Jon.

“Forgive me if that is the impression I gave,” Jon replies, concern coloring his words. Gendry knows better than to say anything at all.

“Second, I have conditions. I won’t promise to stay, there are too many things I want to do.”

“I’ll let you two talk,” Gendry mumbles, getting up from his seat.

“Sit,” Arya demands, “you’re part of the conditions.”

**_____**

Gendry had not missed the way the women in the luxury car had cast appalled looks in their direction as they boarded. Jon had offered Arya his hand, but she shook him off, and climbed the steps on her own, head held high.

Wearing whatever she pleased, without reproach, had been part of Arya’s conditions, and so she had arrived for their trip to Winterfell in long baggy trousers that narrowed at the ankles, and a loose bodiced dress cut to the knees.Gendry thought she looked dashing, and lovely, and more interesting than any of those old biddies that dare judge her.He was glad that Jon had procured them their own car for the long trip. 

In Braavos, she’d agreed to reunite with her family, but made it clear her heart was set on traveling east, to the epicenter of the suffrage movement.Jon’s brow had furrowed, perplexed, at the mention of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Arya hadn’t said anything, to anyone, since boarding and was sitting as far away as possible, gazing out the window at the passing scenery.Gendry could see consternation and weariness, flit across Jon’s features.

“Well, this is going to be interesting,” Harwin muttered, disappearing behind his newspaper, completely missing Jon’s glare. 

Gendry kept his eyes straight ahead, he didn’t know what to expect, not on this trip, not once they arrived at Winterfell, so he kept his eyes and his thoughts to himself, and after a while the steady motion of the locomotive rumbling over the tracks lulled him to sleep.

When he awoke, Jon and Harwin were both dozing.Arya had moved to the open observation car. Through the small window he could see the wind whipping her hair around haphazardly, as she stood on the platform.She had never been more beautiful, or truthfully, more frightening. He still hadn’t had a chance to apologize, and this might be the only chance he got before she was back with her family. He quietly moved through the car, and pulled the heavy door open.

She did not turn as he gently let the door close behind him, but he can tell by the way her back stiffens that she knows he is there. He waits in silence, golden brown fields sweeping past them, cows in the distance.The sun is bright and warm on his skin as the platform rattles loudly under his feet.

“You were right about Jaqen ,”she finally says into the rush of wind, her eyes trained on the tracks receding in the distance.

“He hurt you,” he, surmises, trying to contain the knot of fury that twists against his breastbone.“Fuck!” He knew that asshole was bad news.For the hundredth time (yes, he’d been keeping count) he is angry at himself for leaving her to fend off the likes of that charlatan.

“He tried,” she admits, interrupting his angry thoughts.“He liked hurting little girls. But he made a mistake. He shouldn’t have taught me how to handle a blade so well.”

She turns to face him then.“He tried to force me to do terrible things.He promised me vengeance for my father, but all he really wanted was to destroy what was left of me.”

“If I had known-”

“You did.I didn’t listen,” she concedes with a grimace. “It doesn’t matter now.I was quick, he didn’t suffer, although he deserved too.”

“Arya I’m so sorry.” He moves towards her, reaching out before he remembers himself.The exasperated look she gives him makes him feel like the foolish boy he once was.But just as quickly, her expression quickly turns stony, and she is so far away from him, even though the steady rhythm of the tracks, jostles them closer and closer.

“They will be horrified when they find out what I’ve become.Jon is already-”

“No.He loves you,” he assures, swallowing his doubts, and grasping her hand in his, winding their fingers together.She does not pull away and his heart thumps a furious rhythm against his breastbone. “Your family loves you.” 

_I love you._

She looks down at their joined hands, and then back up at him, “He’s worried I’m not the Arya he remembers.”

“That’s not true,” he replies looking into her eyes, properly, sincerely, for the first time since they’ve found each other again. “You’re exactly who you have always been.”

“Jon, Sansa, they will want things to go back to normal.But I’m not normal, I’m not the Arya that they knew, or the one they will want.All of those years, on the road, doing things I never imagined I would, they’ve made me someone else.”

“They’ll be happy to have whichever Arya you are,” he promises, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear with his free hand.

“I killed Illyn Payne.For what he did to my father,” she admits, her gaze flitting from his, fixing on a spot of rushing scenery over his shoulder, “And I don’t regret it.I’d do it again.”

“I know,” he says squeezing her hand in his, pulling her gaze back to his own. 

“I don’t think I can bear Jon’s disappointment.You can never tell him.Promise me Gendry.” 

“He’s been looking for you since he got out of that field hospital.He doesn’t care about Ilyn Payne, or Joffrey Baratheon, or-”

“Joffrey?” she questions contemptuously, “That twat had the indecency to die before our paths crossed.But I can see why you’d think it was me.”

He chuckles, and she bites her lip.He wants to kiss her right then and there.Instead he takes her other hand in his, and for a long, languid moment their hands are clasped between them, before he leans down, and she surges up, and they are pressed together just so.

“Arya, I’m so sorry,” he breathes out, his forehead against hers, “For being an idiot, for leaving the way I did.I know it hurt you. All of those things, they never would have happened If I hadn’t been so bullheaded.”

“I shouldn’t have expected you to go against what you thought was right, to just blindly follow me,” she sighs, dropping down from her tip toes, her gaze steady, holding him in place, head bowed, his body chasing her nearness.“But it hurt all the same, you were my best friend, the best one I ever had, my family too, and then you were gone, for good I thought.”

“I can be that again, if you’ll have me.”

** _____**

Arya’s sister has sent a carriage to fetch them from the train depot.It is uncomfortably hot and crowded inside, but he keeps his knee pressed against Arya’s anyway.Tension buzzes so loudly he can almost hear it, and he has to force his knee not to bounce in time with rut of the wheels as they pass miles and miles of flat land, dry and brittle, that intermittently gives way to strawberry fields, and almond groves, before turning back to brown.

If anyone notices the way she leans into him, when the road turns bumpy, or the inconvenient blush that burns up his neck to the tip of the ears, when her fingers briefly dance over his thigh, not a word is said. 

Gendry could tell that Jon had been taken aback that Arya had been unwavering in her determination to only stop at Winterfell for a short time, that he blamed her time on the circuit, and what happened to their father for her wayfaring spirit.But Gendry hadn’t known her to be any other way, and couldn’t imagine an Arya Start staying in one place for too long, or not doing what it took to help other people. Gendry thinks it might be nice to see snow along the banks of the Charles River, but he supposes he’s getting ahead of himself.She’d only insisted he fulfill the promise he made all those years ago to see her to Winterfell.She’d said nothing about him staying, there or with her. 

Still, if she asks, he knows what his answer will be.

When they at last turn onto the road that leads to Winterfell, he gets the full scope of Arya’s childhood home. 

She had lied.

It was not a farm, but rather an estate, perched upon a grassy knoll, lined by rows and rows of leafy green vines, covered in bundles of grapes.Beyond, is an orchard of ancient looking trees, covered in crimson leafs._Not a bad place to grow up_, he almost says, but for the dark look on Arya’s face.He bumps his knee reassuringly against hers instead.

They untangle themselves from the carriage, Gendry ducking out the door last. A tall girl with long auburn hair cascading down her back stands on the wide wrap around porch, next to a boy in a wheel chair, who has his hand to his brow, shielding his eyes from the sun.The largest dog Gendry has ever seen stands guard.

Arya takes a deep breath and reaches for his hand.

**_____**

“You’re going to get us into trouble,” he hisses, as she runs her fingers under the hem of his white shirt, his vest and jacket already discarded.

“No, one’s going to come looking for us here,” she rolls her eyes, scooting closer on her knees, peering up him, her fingertips teasing him, “Unless you don’t want to.”

It is embarrassing how easily she undoes him. “Of course I want to,” he grunts as she grins triumphantly, and effortlessly undoes the buttons.This is not the first time she’s pulled him into some abandoned part of the estate, but they’ve never done more than kissed, and he feels himself teetering on the edge or what he wants, and what propriety demands. 

“You’re brothers-“

“Do not mention my brothers when I am trying to seduce you,” she chastises huskily, her lips on his jaw.

“Is that what this is?” he grounds out as forcefully as he can, considering the fact, that all the blood in his body has rushed straight to his cock and he is currently having trouble thinking about anything other than his teeth on the long line of her neck. 

“Of course it is stupid, don’t you want to know what it is like?” she asks, unbuttoning her oversize blouse and letting it fall off her shoulders.

His eyes drop to her chest, then back up to her eyes.“We shouldn’t.”

“We’re nearly married,” she complains, “now is as good as time as any.”

“I’d have us wait until the day I call you wife,” he says resolutely, tugging her blouse back up over her shoulders, his fingers grazing the soft skin of her clavicle.It nearly makes him change his mind. 

She sighs in frustration at his lack of compliance. He kisses the pout on her lips with a chuckle.“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“You can’t always get your way you know.”

“Gendry-”

“Let me have this,” he implores, “just this one thing. I want to do it right. I want to say the words, make the promise. Be your family, officially. And then-”

“And then what?”She goads, raising her brow. 

“And then,” he growls, gently pushing her onto her back by her forearms, hovering over, “then, m’lady, I will follow you anywhere.”


End file.
